In a semiconductor manufacture process, an increase of the number of steps requires a manufacture process to be performed stably and accurately. With regard to this point, Patent Literature 1 discloses the following matter. Specifically, in a process apparatus for sequentially performing a plurality of steps on a to-be-machined object, the processing state or the state of the process apparatus in a predetermined step among the respective processings is monitored. Depending on the monitoring result, the shape of the to-be-machined object in the predetermined step is simulated. A dislocation between this simulated shape and a standard shape determined in advance is detected and processing conditions are set to compensate the detected dislocation in a step subsequent to the predetermined step.
Although not specifically disclosed in Patent Literature 1, a method by plasma simulation has been conventionally used as a method of calculating a shape by plasma etching or plasma deposition. According to this method, based on external plasma parameters (e.g., a power supply voltage, a pressure, or gaseous species for generating plasma), plasma electrons or an ion density or temperature is firstly calculated to thereby calculate the type, density, or energy of the ions or radicals flowing in the substrate for example. Thereafter, a reaction coefficient is given artificially to calculate the etching shape in a time-series manner.
On the other hand, the process is optimized by calculating the electron temperature, the electron density, or the active species of the plasma for example in the semiconductor manufacture process. Patent Literature 2 discloses an on-wafer monitoring sensor to measure the plasma on a wafer surface. This on-wafer monitoring sensor includes a plurality of detection functions by which the energy distribution of incident ions to the substrate surface can be measured, VUV (vacuum ultra-violet rays) photons can be detected, the charge accumulation amount can be measured, and any or both of the combination of the electron temperature and the electron density and the combination of the ion current and the sheath voltage can be measured. This on-wafer monitoring sensor can be combined with other detection method (e.g. emission spectrometry) to thereby measure radical species or ion species.